The author is a student in Portland Oregon.
This report was called- in from a pay phone outside
Seattle. Wed., 7:30 pm Pacific time.

Www.emperors-clothes.com urges the widest possible
distribution of this article. Please copy it in
full, including this note. Thanks.

I just spent 4 days in Seattle.
The "information"
people are getting from the mass media is false. This was
not, as Pres. Clinton claims, a peaceful protest marred
by the actions of violent protesters. This was a massive,
strong but peaceful demonstration which was attacked
repeatedly by the police with the express purpose of
provoking a violent response to provide photo
opportunities for the Western media. I know because I
watched it happening. I'll tell you how they did it.

As Michel Chossudovsky says
in his "Disarming the New World Order" (See
Note # 3 at end for link to that article) - the
government put a lot of effort into making sure the
protesters in Seattle were a "loyal opposition"
who wanted to reform
the WTO, not get rid of it. But the people in Seattle -
American steel workers, Canadian postal workers, college
kids from all over, environmentalists from Australia -
you name it - were not
for reforming the WTO. They were for getting rid of it.

And this wasn't just true of
the protesters. I interviewed
delegates. None of them had anything favorable to say
about the WTO. Two delegates from the Caribbean were
angry about job loss. One delegate from Peru took a
bullhorn and got up on a car and spoke to the protestors
against the World Trade Organization. He said it hurts
the workers and farmers. I interviewed a Norwegian guy
from Greenpeace. Totally against it. Even a delegate from
Holland said it had hurt the farmers there. He said
though it is supposedly democratic, that's actually a lie:
the US, England and Canada and a few others get together
and decide what they want to do. Then they ask the rest
of the countries to vote and if they vote wrong they
threaten, "You won't get loans," or whatever.
They get them to do what they want by blackmailing them.
The Italians we interviewed were upset too. I couldn't
find any delegates who were in favor.

So the government instigated a
"riot" to discredit the
movement against the WTO because they couldn't dilute it.
I am not guessing about this. I was there. I saw it
happening. And I will tell you I am frankly shocked to
see, close up, just how little our leaders care what
happens to ordinary people. Clinton can pose and speak a
lot of flowery stuff but the truth is - we are nothing
to them. I saw this with my own eyes.

Sunday and Monday, there was no
violence. None. The people were
aggressively non-violent; they were self-policing. Up
until Tuesday at 4pm there was one window broken in the
whole city - a McDonalds window. This compares favorably
to the typical rock concert, let alone a demonstration of
people who were non-violently barring entry to the World
Trade Center!

At this point, a new group of police -
tactical police - moved in and started gassing people and
shooting rubber bullets. Is it any surprise that people
got mad? Of course, the young kids hit back by breaking
some windows in retaliation for
being gassed, sprayed with very painful pepper gas, and
shot with dangerous "rubber" bullets. The
police instigated these kids, plain and simple.

Sunday and Monday they had
young cops, using them to block
the streets. These were trainees. But Tuesday they had
the real cops; none of them were young. They were trained
to attack people. A small group, maybe 100 people total,
struck back. Then these cops herded that group around the
city, making sure there were plenty of photo ops of
"violent protesters."

A number of times they had these 100 or so
protesters caught between buildings and walls of police.
They could easily have arrested and detained this small
number of people and gotten it over with. Instead they
would gas them and let them go. Then trap them again, gas
them again, and again let them go. The cops made no
arrests that I know of until late Tuesday night though
the skirmishing was going on from three till 10:30. The
cops would blockade three or five blocks of an area, give
the angry kids room to operate, keep gassing them - when
you gas a person, let me tell you, it gets them fighting
mad.

Tuesday night the police gassed
all of downtown. This was going
on from 3 PM, till 6 PM.. Gas everywhere. The kids broke
a few windows - McD's, Starbucks - small stuff - burned a
few garbage cans. The police were using these people as
extras. It was staged. I believe also the police had
their own people in there, encouraging people to break
stuff - if people think I may be exaggerating, I saw
supposed protesters - they were screaming and so on - and
then later, when everything was over, the same people
tackled other protestors and put handcuffs on them.

At 6pm they issued a State of
Emergency. At that point they had
pushed the 100 people outside the city limits, so the
police went outside the limits too, and they started
gassing that area too, gassing the neighborhoods where
the regular people live. I am not exaggerating. The
police were relentless.

This was in an area from the
city limits for about 10 blocks
to the Seattle Central Community College. If you were
alive, the police gassed you. People coming back from
work, kids, women, everyone. People would go out of their
houses to see what was happening because these tear gas
guns sound like a cannon - and they would get gassed. A
block away there was a Texaco gas station - they threw
tear gas at gas pumps, believe it or not - they were like
vandals. They gassed a bus. I saw it with my own eyes. A
bus. The driver, the riders, the people just abandoned it
.

I was sitting in a little
coffee shop called Bahaus, [Jim
did not spell this - the spelling may be wrong.] They
were shooting "rubber" bullets at the glass. I
picked up a dozen of the things in a few square feet.
They were also shooting this paint that you can only see
with a florescent light. They would paint anyone and
everyone and then go hunting them.

Anyway, because they were
gassing everybody, the local
people got mad too and they joined the 100 who had been
herded out of the city. So soon there were 500 including
the neighborhood people and all very angry. Naturally.
Because they had been gassed and hit with pepper spray,
that stuff does a number on you. And shot with these damn
bullets. Then people set up barricades at Seattle Central
Community College. The cops organized themselves for
about an hour and then moved in and gassed that area.

Today they started mass arrests. That was
because Clinton - the Greeks call him the Planitarchis,
Ruler of the World - was coming. Weeping crocodile tears
about how he just LOVES peaceful protest, which of course
you'd have to be two years old to believe he had nothing
to do with the police action. This whole thing, this
police attack, this was US foreign policy, not some
action decided by some bureaucrat in Seattle. This was
the State Department. They wanted to discredit the people.

Sunday there was a protest of solidarity
involving people from different walks of life. Monday it
got even bigger. Tuesday there was a big sort of carnival
where people were doing different things, a band was
playing music and people were blocking the World Trade
Center. And about 3 PM the cops started throwing tear gas.

The thing that drove Clinton crazy was that on
Tuesday the protesters had succeeded in making nonviolent
human chains and had therefore stopped everyone from
going into the World Trade Center. Only maybe 27
delegates got through, mostly US and British. There were
what seemed like tens of thousands of protesters involved.
So the police did their gassing number against these
nonviolent people to break up the human chains and make
the protesters look violent.

Today (Wednesday) I followed the union protest
put together by the Longshoremen's Union. They went down
to the docks and had a rally then marched to Third Avenue.
As soon as they got there the cops started gassing them.
There was an old lady there. She had gone downtown by bus
to buy something. This lady was in her 70's and I saw her
trying to run, but she couldn't breathe. She was in shock.
I carried her to a building entryway. She was gasping,
terrified. She had been in Germany, and it was like she
was having flashbacks. The tear gas sounds like gunfire
and there were helicopters overhead, sirens, cops on
horses, everything.

They had clearly made a decision to destroy
this movement.

So anyway there I was with her in this
building and she wanted to go to the hospital but there
was tear gas everywhere and I was afraid if I tried to
move her she'd be gassed again. I went to this line of
cops and begged - I mean begged -
these riot police to help her. They ignored me. A girl
told me later that a one year old had been gassed. And I
myself saw a girl no more than 18 - a cop had busted her
lip wide open - she was bleeding - and then they gassed
everyone including her. After that she was kneeling on
the ground crying like a baby and praying for 15 minutes,
Hail Mary, Hail Mary. Over and over. She was in a state
of shock. They just gassed these people who were sitting
down non-violently and doing nothing. Nothing.

At one point the Seattle Mayor said his boys
were not using rubber bullets. Miraculously, by then I
had ten in my pocket. I could open a little market, sell
the things. They are everywhere. I and other people
started giving them to delegates and stuff. "See
what they're doing? They're shooting "rubber"
bullets and lying about it." We showed them to the
media. I guess enough people and the media got the
information because the Mayor made a new statement then
that they were
using them. As if he hadn't known.

They shot rubber bullets from four feet away
into the face of a guy next to me, broke all his front
teeth. When that happened I lost it. I forgot I was
supposed to be getting the news for all of you and I
started yelling at the cops, "What the hell is wrong
with you? Are you sick, man?" So this cop aimed his
gun right at me. That was his answer. So I first put my
hands in front of my face because I didn't want to lose
my teeth. And then I thought, to hell with it. I was
wearing my target shirt that said "Collateral Damage",
you know? With a bullseye target, like they wore during
the bombing in Yugoslavia. And I told this guy, "Go
ahead, shoot! Here! Here's the target!" He didn't
shoot me.

I want to emphasize, these protesters were NOT
violent people. They were the most non-violent people I
have ever seen. Even when I was screaming at the cop,
this girl came up to me and said, "Do not scream.
This is non-violent." These people were too much to
believe. They must meditate all the time, I don't know.

Clinton said he supports nonviolent protest.
That is baloney. Today (Wed.) the protesters were causing
absolutely no "trouble". In downtown the cops
had people running who weren't even protesters - like
that old lady or just people going to work or shopping -
everyone was getting gassed. The busses weren't running
because of the gas. I was lucky to catch one with a
driver who could still see. I begged him to drive the old
lady home - the driver changed his route especially for
her. If you want to find human decency, stay away from
the Planitarchis. Go to the to regular people. They have
some. The Planitarchis lost all his years ago. Now he
wouldn't know human decency if it came up and bit him.

So now I have made personal acquaintance with
the people who run this country, and they are quite
simply scum. There were people at work, people with
babies, they were all getting gassed because the
government would not allow an assembly of people speaking
their minds. It is the same as what happened in Athens.
Clinton's requirements on the Greek government created
the riot and he did the same thing here. And then he says
he supports nonviolent protest? How? By shooting rubber
bullets? And today they outlawed gas masks. They want to
make sure everyone gets his money's worth.

Today, just like yesterday night, the police
were in the residential neighborhoods. People in cafés
were getting gassed and shot at, you could hear it on the
windows, bang, bang, bang. A guy trying to cross the
street to go to his house got gassed. First a drunk guy
outside a bar yelled at the cops "Get out of here!"
so they gassed him. And then this other guys was just
crossing the street to go home so the cops figured, might
as well gas him too. People got gassed for coming out of
restaurants and bars and coffee shops. I'm amazed that
nobody died who had asthma or something.

Or maybe somebody did die and they didn't talk
about it. I mean after all, it's just collateral damage..